The Queen of Water

Starred review from May 9, 2011
This compelling collaboration between Resau (The Ruby Notebook) and Farinangoâwho met while Resau was teaching English at a community collegeâis based on Farinango's tumultuous upbringing in Ecuador as part of an indígena (indigenous) family, forced to live under the thumb of the mestizos (the Spanish upper class). As is common for indígena girls her age, Virginia is sent to live with a wealthy mestizo coupleâin her case, Niño Carlitos and his wife, Doctoritaâand she babysits their children and serves as their maid for eight years. While the living conditions are an improvement over her family's small farm, she endures physical and verbal abuse and is denied an education. Narrating in a singular, authentic voice, Virginia dreams of escape, but her broken identity leaves her directionless. Along the way, though, she employs her imagination, persistence, and hard-won wisdom to recover her strength and freedom. The authors' candid narrative richly depicts Virginia's passage from a childhood filled with demoralization to a young woman who sees her life through new eyes. Ages 12âup.

February 1, 2011

This riveting tale of an indigenous Ecuadorian girl being sent away from her family to work for a middle-class mestizo (of Spanish heritage) couple, this collaborative novel by teen author Resau and Farinango is based on the life story of the latter. Virginia is 7 when she is brought to the town of Kunu Yaku, where she works for years for a horribly abusive woman, her husband, Niño Carlitos, and their children. As Virginia grows into a young woman and Niño Carlitos transforms from a kindly father figure into a dangerous sexual predator, she embarks upon a path that leads her back to her birth family and eventually to a prestigious secondary school, where she finally begins to reconcile the many parts of herself. Bright spots of humor and warmth are woven throughout, and readers will agonize for Virginia while seething at her tormentors. The complexities of class and ethnicity within Ecuadorian society are explained seamlessly within the context of the first-person narrative, and a glossary and pronunciation guide further help to plunge readers into the novel's world. By turns heartbreaking, infuriating and ultimately inspiring. (Fiction. 13 & up)

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Starred review from June 1, 2011

Gr 9 Up-Based on a true story, and told from the protagonist's point of view, The Queen of Water follows a seven-year-old indigena who was taken from her family in the rural Ecuadoran Andes mountains to be a servant in an urban home. Confused, afraid, and alone, Virginia accepts her captors as parents and loves their children. The prejudice of these mestizos, or middle-class natives, speeds the girl's assimilation, though it comes with a price: an inferiority complex that she confronts slowly as she secretly teaches herself to read. Confusion over whether or not her parents gave her away willingly serves the plot well; Virginia's dilemma doesn't fit neatly into formulas about courage and fighting for justice, although eventually both are within her reach. Her mistreatment by the woman of the house, an overweight, selfish dentist, is humiliating, constant, and disturbing; her husband plays her foil-understanding, even loving, until Virginia reaches adolescence-when he tries to molest her. This is a poignant coming-of-age novel that will expose readers to the exploitation of girls around the world whose families grow up in poverty.-Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2011
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* In a desperately poor Andean village in Ecuador, 7-year-old Virginia is sold off by her ind-gena (Indian) parents as a servant to an academic, mestizo family. In her new home, the wife beats her, the husband gropes her, and she is insulted as a longa tonta (stupid Indian). Still, she teaches herself to read and write and begins to perform science experiments in secret. Then, when she is 12, she finally gets a chance to return to her parents: But does she want to? And do they want her? Virginia does travel back to her ind-gena family, but there is not the expected sweet reunion. Ashamed of her illiterate parents and bitter that they gave her away, Virginia is uncomfortable in the familys mud-walled shack, where she cannot speak the language and hates the hard work. Could she go back to being enslaved in the mestizo familys clean prison? Rooted in Farinangos true story, the honest, first-person, present-tense narrative is occasionally detailed and repetitive, but it dramatizes the classic search for home with rare complexity and no sentimentality or easy resolutions. Virginias conflicts with her birth parents and her employers are heartbreaking, even as she finds a way to attend school and shape a more hopeful future. A moving, lyrical novel that will particularly resonate with teens caught between cultures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)